I wanted to have a look at the sites and their underlying structures, but I couldn’t find a URL to any of the six sites.

Tried a google search, got lots of links to the video. (so now I’ve been reminded over and over that nothing like this has been attempted). No URLs. Clearly this is about cool video.

AdSense with no strategy is certainly not a business plan. The obvious questions are: Was the data (which looks to be video-heavy) meta-tagged? Was there good quality structure? did they design the pages with adSense revenue in mind or did they concentrate on showcasing design skills? Did they create a site network to cross promote? You know, all that SEO stuff.

Too often, people conflate online video for web-delivered news, and the problems are worse when people claim to be doing community news. Look at the stuff Rob Curley said works for local communities–like “cover little league like its the Yankees.”

Real local content covered in good structured depth will result in better adSense performance.

As Mike Orren, the first commenter said, this isn’t easy. It does need to be treated seriously.

I agree this is a cool video and that adsense doesn’t make you much money, but I think it’s a mistake to try to glean anything, pro or con about online ad models from this effort:

- Intentionally short term.
- Doubt any of the students were dedicated to ad sales.

Not saying it’s easy, but if all they did to monetize was throw up some adwords, this was a journalism experiment, not a media business experiment.